Marco Ricci

Original etching, signed on plate; Fiocco, Marco Ricci e gli incisori bellunesi del '700 e '800, Belluno 1968, cat. 12b; Succi - Delneri 301.1 I-II/IV;


Superb proof, sharp and well-inked, printed on very thin paper with excellent finish. Complete with all the engraved part and with a margin line all around from 5 to 23 mm. The print has a curious peculiarity that occurred during printing, where a small crease at the lower right corner, later re-stretched, imprinted the corner in a fragmented manner. In perfect condition.

The print was in the Graf collection (Lugt 1092a). Of the collector Thomas Graf, the Lugt gives the following description: "A learned man, he worked for a long time in America as an assistant to Th. A. Edison; later settled in Berlin as a bookseller." An avid collector of seventeenth-century Dutch engravings (Buytewech, Rembrandt), he was particularly interested in the prints described by van der Kellen, then in the German Little Masters and Italian prints. He had also assembled an important collection of German prints from the last century and illustrated books from the same period. Most of his collection was destroyed during World War II (especially that of the Dutch and German schools).